Sightless in the Dark
by F.J. Stellar
Summary: When Vader finds his emotionally estranged wife dead his personal investigation into her murder unleashes both painful memories and astonishing revelations. AU. Amidala
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** The following is an AU, set roughly prior to the events of ANH. Vader and Amidala are husband and wife in the coldest sense of the bond. The marriage is seemingly childless. Flashbacks are employed liberally throughout the story, as through this device a picture of their past twenty year together is developed. The POV is limited to and biased by Vader.

Rating: Without hesitation I give this an "R" rating. Violence and allusions to intercourse aside, there is an underlying theme that is offensive and Oedipal in nature. You are forewarned.

On that happy note: Enjoy:)

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**SIGHTLESS IN THE DARK**

By: Jay Stellar

**Chapter One**

"Now, now, Master, before you go in there _please_ remember that none of this is my fault."

The brass protocol droid was backing away from him with quick, fearful steps, his photo-receptors alight with amber-alert terror in the gloom of the hallway.

"Threepio, I'm quite certain of that. Now, let me through."

"If you'll remember, Master, it was _she_ who turned off the security system. Not me—I'm not to blame for any of this. Artoo and I warned her, but, but…"

"Move—or I shall _make_ you move."

"Oh...Ah...my mistake, Master. Go right ahead." The frantic droid stilled and fell to the side, letting his master stride pass, down the darkened corridor to his wife's rooms. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. He's not going to be at all pleased," he heard Threepio titter solemnly.

Darth Vader had returned this evening to find an unusual party of Nubian officers, Coruscant constables, and Imperial clerks squabbling amongst themselves in the common salon. More accurately it was his wife's salon, and more accurately still, the salon of his wife's residence. This piece of property, one of a hundred million steel-tiered columns that pierced the high clouds of Coruscant, was no more home to him than the orbiting star destroyer he had just disembarked. It just happened to house a hyperbaric chamber and the woman he had the misfortune of being married to.

The going-ons of the salon had scarcely ever held any interest to Vader. Amidala used it mostly for entertaining the other governors of the galaxy and anyone else she considered useful. However, tonight's collection of middlemen officers was such a bizarre arrangement that he did a double take. Some shouted fiercely, some red in the face. An equally irate-looking paramedic team stood off to the side. Stranger still was the absence of his wife.

In the heat of their arguments, they failed to notice that they were under the dark lord's observation.

"May I remind you, Governess Amidala was formerly _Queen_ Amidala of Naboo. Article 13.4-5 of the Nubian Constitution states that all former heads of state must be--"

"This is Coruscant! Nubian laws don't count for squat here. This investigation is under my jurisdiction!"

"The hell it is! Governess Amidala is presently a member of the Imperial Court. _I'm_ heading this case."

One of the paramedics finally spoke up. "You know, it's not like we're getting paid by the hour here!"

"Enough!" cried Lt. Typho, the head of the Nubian officers, the sole individual Vader recognized. A sullen, terse silence came at his command. He continued on calmly. "Fine, you want to do the investigation, well then you can be the on to tell Lord Vader that his--"

Typho paused, Vader himself standing cross-armed in the entranceway. "Lord Vader!" The aged black man covered his surprise with a rigid smile and dipped his head in a curt bow.

"Tell me what, Lieutenant?" he asked softly, stepping down into the room..

"That would be Imperial Officer Whidbey responsibility to tell--" started one of the Coruscant constables smartly, finding his next breath prevented by an invisible hand squeezing down on his throat. All watched as the constable's body was flung against far a sofa, toppling it over.

"Now, again: what exactly is going on here?"

Once more his question went unanswered for at that moment Amidala's two eccentric droids wandered upon the scene. Malfunctioning and archaic See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo, were the troublesome, robotic pair Amidala still found oddly amusing and had kept around all these years.

"Oh, Master Vader, you've returned!" It wasn't so much a greeting but a declaration of horror.

Vader's patience was quickly coming to an end as no explanation was in sight. "Threepio, where is Governess Amidala?"

"Well, that happens to be a most complicated matter, Sir. I'm afraid Artoo and I have terrible news…_Artoo_! Come back here you miserable little contraption! You promised me we'd tell him together."

The little astromech had beeped in alarm and promptly rolled away upon laying sight on Vader, disappearing down the hall somewhere to safety.

As Vader strode past Threepio and his profuse apologies, he could only distractedly wonder what was wrong with Amidala. He had sensed nothing out of the ordinary tonight; it could not be serious whatever it was.

It seemed Artoo had not fled after all. The smaller droid was waiting patiently for Vader at the doors to Amidala's chambers. He cooed a rueful condolence at his approach.

"She's in there?" Vader now keenly felt an intangible flutter of something maybe amiss. Artoo bobbed forward, a silent, solemn affirmative.

In most marriages one would not feel a certain sense of absurdity in entering his or her partner's living space. However, Vader's union with Amidala had so long been a mere formality that they possessed the intimacy of mutual strangers off the street. His hand hovered uncertainly over the door release. It felt like an unnatural intrusion; they worked so hard at maintaining the professional distance of their marriage. He had been in her rooms rarely over the years, each separate occasion a particularly unhappy episode. By the same token Amidala had rarely been so bold as to wander into his territory. Vader should just walk on by, continue about his evening's business and leave her to hers.

But then there was that inexplicable gathering of investigators and paramedics in his living room. Even more disquieting was the elusive nagging now urging him to check in on his wife.

After twenty-three years he owed her this much, didn't he?

The double doors hissed open.

"Amidala?"

Her office den was dark and empty, lit only by the city lights and the warm glow from her bedroom slanting in across the carpet floor. Peering into the bedroom he saw the Governess curled up in her bed, partly covered by silken sheets.

He found it curious afterwards that he did not immediately realize she was dead. Half a lifetime ago he would have felt her life languish from the other end of the galaxy, his heart stopping with hers all the way past the Outer Rim. He would have streaked homeward, sweating in his flightsuit, choking on the numb futility rising in his throat.

At this moment in time however, Vader was still mostly convinced she was, at worst, ill.

"Amidala?" said Vader again, stepping around her large bed. Her face was set with neutral, nebulous determination and was bare of the elaborate, Nubian paints. Years of regal glowering had lined the skin about her eyes and mouth: imprints of an expression, tattoos of her displeasure with the galaxy. She was thinner than he remembered her. Stripped from her immense ceremonial gowns she was truly his opposite; a short, small waif of a woman totally eclipsed by his bulk and height. He could crush her if he came too near.

"Amidala?"

Still no response. He hesitated to touch her, unwilling to get too involved in this drama he saw unfolding. Vader had made it his business to avoid drama over the past decades, believing to have gotten his life's share of personal suffering over with in his formative years. He didn't need this. "_Amidala_!" He was furious now, grasping and shaking her violently. Her head lolled lifelessly and her mouth parted as if in silent protest to his brutality. Released, she slumped back down onto her pillows and Vader, wearily, opened his mind to her presence.

It was not there. He hadn't expected to be. Only fading tracks of her last moments lingered about her body. Despair, horror—she hadn't wanted to die.

Artoo had since joined him at the side of the bed and gave him a consolatory nudge at the knee. Vader refused to acknowledge the gesture, wondering distantly if Artoo was the one more distraught over this turn of events. It had always been Vader's firm suspicion that the droid was a great deal more human than he.

"Threepio said Amidala shut down the security system?"

Artoo beeped a "yes."

"And I suppose she gave her aides the night off?"

Right again.

"And she locked you and your other half in a storage closet as if to insure that you two have no idea about what transpired here tonight, other than the fact that you found her dead in her bed?"

He was on a roll.

Vader sighed and rose from the bed. "Watch her, while I go take care of the circus in the living room." _As if she's going anywhere_, he thought moodily, striding down the hallway back to the collection of officers grouped between the sofas and lounging chairs.

They all watched Vader carefully, bracing themselves for the worst.

"Your services will not be required here tonight, therefore I suggest that you all depart immediately. I will decide who conducts the investigation into Governor Amidala's death, regardless of whatever stipulations your jurisdictions may have. You medics, however, shall return in the morning for the body. That is all."

He had hoped one of them would protest. An excuse to throttle any one of them would have been welcome. Vader didn't murder the innocent, but easily found the guilty. He only needed one, offhanded reason…

But they all filed out of the room in respectful silence, the medics guiding the body of the strangled officer on a suspended gurney up the steps and out of sight. Not one misplaced, over-the-shoulder look of sympathy. Typho came the closest to death, catching Vader's eye and nodding respectively.

And then Vader was alone. Alone with his dead wife. It was a sinking feeling, reinforced by the realization that he and Amidala had been dead to each other long before this black night.

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**Reviews?** **Oh yes, please!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own nuttin'!

**Author's Note: **This chapter shifts to flashback, launching the recount of Vader and Amidala's marriage. Note that these memories are **not** in italics. As such a great chunk of Sightless in the Dark will be flashback, I thought it would be hard on the eyes to read lines upon lies of slanted script. I hope this switching of settings does not become confusing. If it does, please tell me in the **reviews** and I'll try my best to denote the differing eras better in the ensuing uploads.

Speaking of reviews, thanks to **QueenMeep** and **Gizzi1213** for you for your kind encouragement!

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**Chapter Two**

Personal reflection was not something Vader was fond of. It is a common misconception that this and meditation—which he did a great deal of—were one in the same. Meditation is a state of restful, relative calm and oneness with the world. By contrast, Vader found personal reflection to be a wracking dredging of old bits and scraps of settled life that had no business being disturbed from the past's sequestered sea floor. Either or was a solitary act and required Amidala's staff be sent from the property in the footsteps of the previous circus he had kicked out.

He rang the property's lower levels where the stormtroopers and communication officers held station. The line buzzed repeatedly; he paced irritably at the trills. After some time numbly he cut the call. They must already have gone.

Only Amidala had the authority to clear out the lower levels.

Sabé and the other hooded wonders of Amidala's clandestine handmaiden posse turned up shortly after, demanding access his wife. In the tradition of the Ancient Nubians, the handmaidens were to off themselves immediately upon the death of their queen, so as to ensure all sensitive secrets and hairstyle techniques went with her to the grave. They had heard the news and returned, now attempting to push their way past Vader and commit the sacred suicide in the presence of Amidala's body.

Vader's stubborn refusal was beginning to wear on Sabé's habitual air of demur, clerical apathy. Her mouth twitched under the perma-shadow cast by her cowl.

"I find your disrespect for Naboo's traditions offensive, Lord Vader".

"And I find your traditions to be bizarre and occult. Now leave!"

The tall woman stepped closer, trying futilely to sidestep him. The others hung back morosely, regarding him with the aloof disdain so typical of the Nubian gentlewomen. "If you have any respect for your wife you will allow us access. She valued our loyalty beyond all else."

"Then she was foolish to do so. It would seem her death is satisfactory proof that your loyalty wavered. We would not be having this argument had you not left her side!"

"Our lady demanded solitude. We obeyed."

"Are you bodyguards or androids? You should not have allowed her to turn off the security system!"

"Governor Amidala was ardent that her privacy was not to be invaded tonight." The first break of emotion could be heard it the woman's smooth voice. Vader mentally urged her to continue, sensing his questions were about to be answered. "We begged her not meet her guest--"

Realizing her words were now slipping out at his will, Sabé gasped. She shook her head furiously at Vader, her subordinate handmaidens crossing their arms in eerie unison. Not since the Jedi Order had there been such a creepily furtive, mentally in-synch collection.

"Not even your devilry could make us betray Amidala's secrets. Come, girls. We shall depart now and return prior to the medic's arrival in the morning. It is preferable to delay the ceremony than to aid Lord Vader's unholy investigation into her death."

Vader was too exhausted to stop them, letting them file into the lift. He would question them further upon their return. As the doors hissed shut, Sabé called to him, "The dead's secrets die with them, Vader. You'd be wise to realize this before our return."

Vader wondered vaguely if that was a threat or advice as he watched the elevator lights count downwards.

Thankfully, the droids put up less of a fight than the handmaidens when he locked them in a hall closet, powering only See-Threepio down. "Oh, not again!" he moaned helplessly while Vader reached for the "off" switch. Apparently Amidala had subdued them in much the same manner.

Finally, as alone as he could be stationed on a planets of trillions, Vader turned down the oily yellow lights of the salon until the brilliance of the Coruscant nightline was again visible. He sat, hunched over on a sofa too delicately designed for him and sighed mechanically.

Vader would not go back to the body yet. He could not calm himself enough to mediate. He had all the time in the universe to start the investigation. Right now he would reflect and rack his brains over the past twenty years of his marriage.

There was an even earlier time when they had been married, but there was no point in considering that distant epoch of their lives. That was a marriage of another man, a marriage of an entirely different sort. It was a foolish undertaking begun out ofimmature passionand brash naivety. The present was so far removed from anything remotely similar that Vader thought back only far enough to the first day of their second marriage: the last day of his surgeries.

The two weeks prior where he lay drugged, agitated, and operated on, passed as disjointed emersions from the deep, black pool of a medicated drip. He remembered only fragments. The staccato blip of a monitor. Blaring, artificial lights all the way down the hallway. Killing the nurse. Tension in the operating room. His transfer to the droids.

Vader learned after that he had arrived almost but not wholly dead, accompanied by the Emperor and his entourage of villains, each entirely unpleasant. He had been a writhing, breathless, bloodied torso and a head that moaned, and cursed, and spat horrible things onto the facility's immaculate O.R. floor. His presence had caused a great disquiet. The nurses refused to go near him, the image of one of their own strangled by his sheer ill will still fresh in their memory. She had bent her lovely head near the black, corroded flesh, offering soft words of comfort and a sharp injection of relief, only to find her next breath impossible.

The doctors were no braver than their nurses. He was a difficult patient, they told him as he drifted from this world to the next. They had never seen anything like it and they were the best. He was being moved down the hall where they were better equipped. Droids were more capable at delivering the results that Vader's benefactor desired.

All the way down the hallway he asked for his wife. They did not answer. Perhaps he could not be heard over the frantic murmuring of the healers or the erratic, electronic bleeps of the monitors. Perhaps they thought his demands to be mad ramblings; who would have wed this malevolent beast?

Only after Vader had been properly strapped down to the second operating slab and she on the other side of the threshold, did one nurse answer him. She had not the faintest clue about his wife, but offered, "I pray, for her sake, that that poor soul is far, far away from here." Her clinical smile was only visible for the one moment in the sliver space between the closing doors.

The nurse knew, as well as he, that Vader deserved to be left in the dark.

The overhead lights switched off for the rest of the operations. Droids did not require anything but ghostly headlamps to attach new legs while his others burned some thousand billion kilometers away. As metal wired into bloody flesh he could still feel the skin of those phantom limbs scorch and blister into nothing but the same pain he would endure for all eternity. He fought the agony in waves, a drowning man flailing, losing against the surge. Another anesthesia. Down, down, down, back into the deep. They threw him a line, gave him back a trachea. Motors whirred to life inside his dead organs, gears snapped sharply into place. A metonym click, click, clicked along with his heart.

He cried "Water!" and he cried "Master!" and then he cried a name he could no longer fit his swollen tongue around.

Beyond his own agony there was another pain with no claim on his body tormenting him just the same. Another surgery bathed in an ethereal glow that could have been a dying angel's gentle radiance or just another blinding set of industrial lamps. Vader looked up—Padmé looked up—and there loomed the ever genial, ever understanding Obi wan Kenobi.

Vader gnashed his teeth (he still had those), knowing Obi Wan was at his place, at her side, holding her hand, under those bright lights. They would ask Kenobi if he was the father, and he would smile with all the galaxy's contentment and say yes, thinking back to the burning form howling on the fiery banks of hell with a certain sense of self-righteousness. How difficult it had been to leave Vader in two, but in the end had it not been the only way? Obi Wan would perhaps reflect on this with a sad, pious smile many times in the future, but now the poor child who writhed on the pallet below required his attention.

She was screaming somewhere across the galaxy, but Vader could have sworn she was no further than across the room. Gasping, crying, dying, she had a tenuous hold on life she was begging have severed. Vader had a tenuous hold on her he would not sever for the world, a connection Kenobi realized with a start. "He's here," she whimpered between the contractions of her womb and the next thing Vader knew Kenobi cut the brief, fragile connection as easily as he had cut Vader's limbs.

That would be the last time he ever truly knew his wife.

Oh how the Vader wished it was a cold hatred he had for Kenobi. A frigid, passionless exercise of deferential loathing. To know that Kenobi could still get the better of him, could still evoke these painful emotions, tormented Vader to no end. His was a fierce, fervid hatred further fanned by the fervor of Mustafar, but he vowed it would be with cold tranquility that he killed Kenobi. If only to ensure the death of Kenobi, would Vader will himself to live, for Kenobi had taken everything and now all that remained for him was to take on Kenobi.

His dosage was increased again and he fell back into fitful suspension.

The droid asked him to flex his toes. He could not even focus his gaze on the robot, let alone perform its task. Something white-hot prodded at him. He felt the zap through a crude mimicry of sensation. He flexed his toe.

Upon his next awakening he found himself half-listening to a distorted conversation becoming clearer as the layers of his anesthesia wore off.

"It defies all logic, your highness," a healer was saying. "He should be very well dead."

"Ah, but Doctor what is keeping this wretched creature alive has never obeyed the rules of logic."

The Healer momentarily forgot his station. "I though the Force died out along with the Jedi last month."

"Publicly," the voice answered smoothly. The Emperor's shadow slid off the wall and along the floor as it earthly form moved away from the dimmed lamps, towards the platform. Yellow eyes peered out from the gloom and Vader met the terrible gaze with his own dead stare. "Your drugs seem to be failing. The patient is awake."

"He resists our best efforts to ease his suffering, your highness. He is stubborn, almost masochistic, in his desire to remain conscious and ride out the pain. We've administered enough sedative to tranquilize a wild Nexu and yet he still stirs now and again, cursing out my medi-droids and destroying equipment."

The Emperor's lips curled, having never been quite so pleased. "That is because he knows he deserves to suffer. That he has brought this all down upon himself. And as every Jedi knows, there are _consequences_ to actions… and one must stand tall and grit and bear those consequences." He paused in his quiet speech, his eyes leaving Vader's to observe the half-man's injuries. His cruel smile only widened. "Now at present, our patient can't stand up. But what he will do…what he _has done_, is borne the totality and the profundity of the _pain_ and the _suffering_ and the _agony _he has incurred. For that is what a man does. Lord Vader in every human sense has been emasculated, but he lies here, strapped to this bed, wanting only to suffer the pain he is entitled to. For pain is the only way he shall ever feel human again. He choked your nurse and destroyed your droids, Doctor, because you were denying him that right. The right, as they say, to take it like a man."

Vader could only twitch his half-responsive limbs in rage. This was perhaps the most truthful Palpatine had ever been to him. He preferred the lies.

The Emperor bent closer, eyes narrowed. "Now understand this, Lord Vader. Every limb of your body is mere circuitry and coverings. There are more tubes hooked into you than I care to say. You will never again breathe properly by your own power. And so, you must ask yourself, is it really worth braving this anguish just to cling to what is barely left of your humanity?"

"Where's my wife?" he hissed. Black spots appeared before his eyes from the sting of his ruined throat.

Vader had intended to anger his master, but the Emperor merely smiled genially: a twisted caricature of his pleasant politician's face. "Up until yesterday I would have thought among your murdered, Vader. But it just so happens she is your second visitor on this fine evening. I believe Senator Amidala has some rather important issues to discuss with you. Doctor, shall we leave the happy couple to it?"

The Healer assented fearfully and followed the Emperor from the room. At the doorway, once again a hunched obstruction of the outside corridor's glimmering lights, his shadow turned to another, smaller silhouette. "He is all yours, my Lady."

She nodded and they left her to it.

Here was the woman who had suffered equally as Vader thrashed on the surgery slab. Here she was across the room but she could have been any where in the galaxy for all he felt her. He let his head slump to the side and watched her dazedly. Amidala was unwilling to allow herself any closer to his stab; perhaps she thought it was proximity that allowed him to crush her throat the last time. Their recent ordeal had drained all emotion from her face, betraying no sympathy for his situation and no sorrow for hers. And there was certainly no fear to be found in her features, just daggers in her eyes and a mouth that would never truly smile again.

"I've come to strike a bargain, O husband of mine."

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	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** If questions arose from last chapter, this may provide some orientating answers. Enjoy :)**

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**CHAPTER THREE**

The terms were simple enough. Amidala had come to him not so much as to save their marriage but to strike the second part of the cleverest, two-pronged political alliance of her career. Had there ever been a smarter match that a Senator—soon to be Governor—wed to the Empire's right-hand man with the blessing of Palpatine himself?

But first she would have had to convince the Emperor. Vader imagined her striding alone into the atrium of the Imperial Palace, demanding an audience with Palpatine. They would have ceded to her commands only after recognizing the once classical, now severe beauty of Senator Amidala. Up to the main tower, once the Chancellor's, now the Emperor's, the clones would have led her, pressing the tips of their riffles into her back. They no longer owed her one iota of respect.

The Emperor would have made her wait, relishing the sensation of her stewing on the other side of the doorway. Finally the red, towering statues would have parted and let the slight woman past, bowing gracefully to their Emperor as Amidala fixed her steady gaze on the one being she had once hated beyond all other things.

But hate was beneath her now. There was no room for passion in the new politics of the Empire.

Vader had since heard both versions of the conversation from both parties. He had constructed the scene in his head over the years.

Vader imagined him smiling softly at her stony face, gesturing grandly for her to take a seat. Even during the days of her reign on Naboo had Palpatine had played her warm, grandfatherly mentor. Amidala had never appreciated this role even at fourteen, and now at twenty-seven the belittlement would have wired her jaw rigid.

Palpatine took a seat on the other side of his desk. "Yes, Senator? How may I be of service to you on this fine afternoon?"

In Vader's mind, Amidala leaned forward, and with her powerful, unsmiling leer told him, "I need you and you have most _desperate_ need of me."

Presumably, Palpatine said nothing for a moment, steepling his fingers: the politician's habit he still had not lost in his two weeks of tyranny. He had also not yet traded his office for the gloomy throne room Vader would come to know very well in the coming years. "Hmm," the Emperor would have grunted, the left side of his mouth pulling into a terrible grin. She would have stifled her repulsion, not yet used to his newly-wrought ugliness.

"I can understand the need you have for me. It is quite suspicious how you and Senator Bail Organa have been unavailable to the Senate for these past few weeks. I can't say I ever liked that fellow. Very suspicious. I have terminated senators in the past for lesser grievances. And then there's the matter of you being the leader of opposition in the Old Republic. I don't know how familiar with our new political system you are, but I can assure you that this position is no longer required. In fact, I believe you've already been formally relieved of your duties in the Senate."

"So, I've been told."

"Then you've come wishing for me to re-instate you?"

She would have shaken her head, smiling slightly. "I desire nothing more to do with the Senate."

This would have surprised him. "Then what is it that you desire? Tell me, I am most eager to be disinclined."

"I've heard rumors of a new ruling body, comprised of governors—favorites of yours. I've heard you've divided the galaxy between them, allowing them rule over hundreds of star systems. All military and political power has been placed in their grip and they answer to you alone."

"You've heard correct. And?"

She would have said nothing for a moment, just watching, waiting. Then, "I want a seat on this governing council."

Vader imagined his master's scoffing laughter.

"I only ask for Naboo. Surely you can find it in you to grant me that." Amidala wouldn't beg, but she would reason.

"And why would I do that. You must realize by now I've wanted you dead since day one."

"You need me."

"So you've said, but I fail to see just exactly_ why_ I need you."

"You see, somewhere during my conversation with my husband on Mustafar, it became apparent to me that you had promised him my life in return for his services. Now, Anakin—excuse me, Lord Vader—has suffered a very raw deal; I understand he is recovering from terrible injuries at the Imperial Rehabilitation Center."

"He is."

"Spare my life and make me a governor. In turn, you will be able to hold up your end of the bargain you forged with Lord Vader. I will live and stand by his side with your blessing."

"Hmmm," he would groan thoughtfully. "True, true, very true. Ipromise him that. But tell, me, _Governor_, why did you come back? I had hoped you had perished, but wonderedif perhaps you had gone off into exile. I thought peace, justice, and democracy was you mantra."

"Why did I come back?" Vader imagined her snide, triumphant smile. "Peace, justice, democracy—I truly believe we share these principals, your Highness. I can't imagine the galaxy in better hands. It would be an honor to continue working under you"

All traces of humor would have vanished from the Emperor's face.

"Now I _know_ you're lying."

For some ill-defined reason Vader would never know the truth of, Palpatine agreed to this treacherous proposition of Amidala's. And for that reason alone, Palpatine granted her access to what was left of her husband.

"The Emperor wanted me to evaluate your condition myself before I agreed to remain married to you," she told Vader with all the warmth of a comet streaking space-ward.

"You're safe." he managed: a croaky whisper, even more painful to say than it was to hear. He tried to take a great, gulping gasp of air in retribution and failed. He coughed fiercely.

"Yes." She looked very pale but stood very straight.

At once, he saw she was a great deal littler around the middle than the last time he had laid eyes on her. The roundness of pregnancy had shrunk away.

"The child," he cried. "Where…?"

She must have given birth he realized. A million and one questions came to him. Boy or girl? Who did it look like? Was it healthy? When could he see it?

Amidala's face was unreadable. She let him wonder wide-eyed for a moment. She let him think for the first time since he had been at the Imperial Rehabilitation Center that there was still something good in the world.

This way the news would be all the more painful.

"It was a stillborn. I delivered it dead."

"No…"

"The doctors think that it was lack of oxygen that killed it." Was that cruel satisfaction he discerned from her features? Amidala rubbed her throat as though it were tender. "Apparently it suffocated in my womb. I wonder how that happened…"

He gritted his teeth, letting out a high sound of anguish, turning his head away. Vader closed his eyes, hoping for once the medication would soothe him back into blissful oblivion.

Finally, he said, "And you want to stay married...Why?"

"Many reasons, but spite chiefly."

He moaned pointlessly.

"The Emperor also thinks I should keep a close watch on you as you adjust to the suit."

"Suit?" All at once he felt the awkward numbness in place of where his limbs ought to be. Breathing was suddenly all the more laborious.

"I wouldn't dwell on it. That just makes it worse." Amidala said lazily and stepped closer to the slab until she stood over him. "How much do you remember from Mustafar?" From his blank look she surmised, "Not a lot, eh?"

But he did remember. He remembered all of it. She had tried to kill him; she had brought Kenobi to do it. He remembered rage. He remembered the look of horror and betrayal and then love still in her eyes in that eternal moment before she crumpled to the floor. And he remembered fire. He had been on fire! He was burning—even now still!

The soft, medicated cloak of half-consciousness was ripped from his body. The pain! He screamed and he hollered—not from the pain which in itself was insurmountable—but the agonizing acknowledgement that he was but half a man. The words of the Emperor rose like bile in his mind and Vader gagged at the reality of his situation.

"…_circuitry and coverings…"_

He screamed until he gasped for breath that would not come and then could only gaze horrified up at Amidala who had not so much as flinched during his outrage. He expected her to tell him that he deserved every minute of it. Instead she brought her hand down along his chest and pressed in on a button in much the same manner one would start up a droid.

Vader felt the seizing of his heart slow so that it was out of rhythm with his panic.

"Wh-wh-a…are you do-ing to me?"

"Look up."

He obeyed fearfully and she switched on the overhead mirrors. Vader was reminded of those alien, tackily decorated hotels where the ceilings were mirrored so that lovers could watch themselves in bed. Their macabre reflection seemed assterilized as the surgical instrument were. She was so white, dressed in heavy, dark material that caught the cold light and glimmered in an unworldly way. He shone too: the black metal of his shins and shoulders gleamed in industrial splendor. Vader was brand horribly new except for his scarred, raw head—too weak and battered to belong to this powerful body.

They caught the eyes of each other's reflection.

Amidala looked away first, gesturing to the panel built onto his chest. "This panel controls the suit. The suit controls your body. You control this panel." She went onto explain the different functions, telling him his lungs were damaged beyond repair and he would have to wear a mask unless he wished to spend the rest of his life flat on his back.

He was twenty-three years old and he may as well be dead.

"Now, one last thing, Lord Vader. We have yet to discuss the conditions of our marriage." Amidala ticked off the new stipulations. "One, I am your wife in only the loosest of legal senses. I will go and come as I please. I will do and not do as I please. The same applies to you."

"Agreed," Vader whispered.

"Two, the past is the past and do not ever attempt and make it the present. Know what we had is lost. All we can do is move forward professionally."

Vader nodded.

"And lastly…" She rubbed at her throat, this time unknowingly. Something shined in her eyes. "Don't you ever,ever touch me again."

"I won't hurt you, I promise. I'll keep you safe…I'll"

"No. That's not what I said. Do you vow to not even _touch_ me, Vader—ever again?"

"I do," he said.

And thus began the first day of their second marriage.

Assured, Amidala left his side and strode majestically toward the exit. "They will be fitting you with the mask shortly." In the next second she was gone.

Vader refused to recall his exact thoughts as the mask lowered and the black helmet snapped into place. Even now it caused him a terrifying claustrophobia. He rose furiously from his memories,rising from the salon sofa twenty years later. The first breath had been so loud; he scarcely heard it anymore.

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**Please Review**


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I didn't realize how short this chapter was until I went back an edited it. Meh.

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**Chapter Four

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"You know, this is not exactly how I envisioned my evening," he told Amidala's corpse furiously.

Except it wasn't evening. The Chronometer blinked two. It was technically morning, just as it was technically his responsibility to be here, as Amidala was technically his wife. The medics would be back in several hours for the body.

For a man who was the force, rather Force-choke, behind so many deaths, the irony of his inexperience with all things funeral related was not lost on him. Death, for the majority of the later part of his life, had been too common place for significance. When was the last time death had truly affected him?

The image of another older, dark-haired woman swam in his vision momentarily, her desert-weathered features under-lit by the low, oil-lamps of Tusken Raider's tent as she blew her last breath through cracked, bloody lips. He quickly suppressed the image only to be assaulted by another bleak moment of his past. A younger, dark-haired woman, her tragedy-stricken features eerily lit by the cold, overhead lights of the surgery room, told him his child was dead with grim, pitiless eyes.

Vader knew a great deal about murder. His murdered were a long list of faceless Imperial officers who bowed clutching their necks to the ship floor without distinction from the next captain or general. Then there were the Rebels and the Jedi, so fevered in the passion of their cause that the spilt blood seemed to steam with their fierce ardor. Vader had never hid a murder; Vader had never been sneaky in all his two lives (well, except the time when he hid the fact he was married and an expecting father from Obi Wan and the entire Jedi Order). But he could imagine what and ill-concealed murder looked like and what it looked like was what lay before him now…

First it was the wine uncorked on Amidala's bedside table. Such is the common, romantic notion that lonely ladies kill themselves with a lethal combination of wine and spice. Set next to the bottle and elegant glass as expected was a tray of glittering contraband, set at an angle that would suggest she set it down in a comprised state. If the murderer had been truly gifted at his or her craft, he or she would have dusted a bit of the drug spice about the tip of her nose for realism. Vader had a firm suspicion that this had been individual's first killing.

Suicide by wine and spice was such a romantic notion because it was widely believed that one passed away pleasantly in their sleep after ingesting the combination. In most cases, nothing was further from the truth. Vader had once been witness one of these painful incidents. He remembered clearly an episode where a blundering member of the Imperial aristocracy, whom Vader had been ordered to execute, caught wind of his immanent termination. Apparently he preferred a clean suicide to the horror and humiliation of being Force-choked for incompetence and had consumed both substances. Vader had arrived at the man's chambers, flexing his right hand ominously only to find the General suffering a death more painful than Vader could have ever hoped to administer. He stood and watched as the man hollered and convulsed in his blood-soaked sheets. Vader could not muster the mercy to end it for him early.

But Amidala seemed to have been in at least in physical peace as she passed away. She would have known better than to kill herself in this manner.

Vader stepped towards the bed and bent over her. "Mind if I sit?" he murmured, smoothing the sheets next to her side. Half-expecting her corpse to start awake, Vader sat hesitantly with all the ease of an over-sized bird perched on a wire. His great weight suppressed the mattress unevenly and the body slumped toward him. Vader gave a small, startled jerk.

"Let's talk. We never talk anymore, don't you find?" The dead woman's lips remained pursed. "You feel the exact same way?" he exclaimed mockingly, sounding particularly absurd in his deep rumble . This was the most pleasant conversation they had had in years.

Emboldened, he cupped her face in one large hand, smoothing back the dark curls of her hair. "Now tell me, my Lady, why in the galaxy would you send the staff from the property and turn off the security system? Were you asking to get yourself killed? Hmmm? And I doubt it was you who did the killing. It is not your character. You were a lot of things, but never a coward.

"So, who was it? Who did you trust enough to let in to the house so unprotected? I know of a great many who wanted you dead. Tarkin, Xizor, every member of the Rebel Alliance, Queen Jarvis-Delahaye, oh, and the Emperor especially…but I would be here all night if I continue naming names. Let us see how they did it. Permit me…"

Lifting Amidala, her limbs now locked with death, he felt around for any wounds. Again, he marveled at the wasted state of her body and was beginning to wonder if perhaps it had been illness that took her life when he found a slight, swollen discoloration on her back. Murder, officially. Dead by a poisonous dart.

The myriad of possible assassins and motives that flooded his mind all at once exhausted him. He rose, feeling the iron weight of every metal bolt and wire of his body, and stumbled backwards into one of her squashy, corner chair, asleep in minutes.

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_The dusty disarray of Watto's junkshop was so much more cramped and darkened than he remembered it. His Master buzzed around the shop, irritated as always, swamped by an influx of customers. Watto had him rushing haphazardly from one project to the next, barely finished tightening the rivets of one engine before he was rewiring the circuitry of a GONK-unit. Sour and overwhelming, the smell of hyperdrive fluid was making him lightheaded as he pushed between the towering bodies of customers. _

_Sweating, relief came to him as a fresh breath of air blew through the sweltering shop. A moist, morning lake breeze. He saw a group of familiar strangers browsing through the racks. J-327 Nubian, murmured one. Between the two, tall, powerful figures of the Gungan and the Jedi, stood a girl half their size. Bathed in an unworldly glow, she had a wonderful way of never meeting his eye even as he struggled towards her, crying out her name. The sea of bodies refused to part and she refused to look his way._

"_Come here, son. Let me show you something."_

_An adult caught him by the shoulder and dragged him away. Tarkin had a job for him to do. The aged man placed a cold, grey sphere in his tiny child's hands. Promising to fix it for Tarkin, he attempted to make his was back to the girl, the dull ball swelling in his grip. Its circumference widening at an alarming rate, he strove vainly to keep it in his weak grasp. He was forced to balance it on his bent back, reaching around to grip it awkwardly. The weight bent him lower and lower, and on trembling, newborn legs he stumbled to the girl. Only as the great, grey globe sank him to his knees, did she spare him a glance, large brown eyes widening as it rolled from his hold, across the gritty floor, knocking finally against the wall._

_It detonated in a brilliant flash and… _

Vader was awake in the next instant.


End file.
